How to Cross Stitch a Family Portrait

Making your family in stitching is a super cute way to decorate your house. You can frame the finished project and hang it by the door, make it into a pillow, photograph it and use it on your Christmas cards — there are so many fun ways to use it. And it’s a great way to document your family’s growth or preserve a time in your life.

But how do you cross stitch a family portrait?

You can work with an actual photograph as inspiration or just line up your family in your mind. This post from Martha Stewart covers the basics of how to draw out people. I love the tips here about the size of people’s heads! Also remember to consider the things that make a person look like themselves, which is often their hair, if they have glasses, and other distinguishing features.

While a cross stitch portrait can’t have a lot of details, making sure you hit the basics of a person will make it look more like them.

Catholic Sprouts has great tips on making your family in pixels, too, and you can use her patterns of her family as a basis for your own if you’re not sure where to start.

More Like Home has a video tutorial on stitching a family portrait if you’re more of a visual learner (note: she mentions her website in the video but when I click the link none of the photos show up and I get a security warning when I try to download her templates, so proceed with caution there).

If you need more help with how to cross stitch a family portrait, or make a stitched version of anyone you want, check out the book Pixl People, which has thousands of options for personalizing people, from body type and hairstyle to clothing and accessories like pets, plants and more than can be included in your designs. Stitch People has a great basic guide to designing people that might be a little less overwhelming in that it helps guide you through the process of selecting the details and producing your chart.

You can also get someone to make a custom chart for you to stitch from, like this one from Overflow Creative on Etsy.

[Photo: Catholic Sprouts.]

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15 Ugly Christmas Holiday Sweaters To Cross Stitch

Cross Stitch Foxy has a huge selection of cross stitch patterns perfect for gifts or using in your own home decor. As of this writing there are more than 900 patterns listed, so there’s no way I can cover them all, but let’s take a quick peek at some of the options.

As with many cross stitch designers, Cross Stitch Foxy has a lot of holiday themed patterns, including Christmas, Halloween and Easter and St. Patrick’s Day. There are patriotic American patterns, feminist patterns and so much more.

Since we’re heading into the Christmas season as I write this, I thought I’d highlight one of the more than 100 Christmas listings in the shop. These Christmas mugs would be cute to have hanging in your kitchen or anywhere else all winter long.

The full pattern is 86 by 101 stitches, which comes out to 6.1 by 7.2 inches, or 5.5 by 18 cm, when stitched on 14 count fabric. It calls for 19 colors. Of course you could also stitch a single mug if you’d rather, or put them into individual frames.

One thing that is fun about Cross Stitch Foxy’s projects is that the intention is that to some extent you can use what you have to make the projects. None of the projects include single stitches of a color, and colors can be replaced with the colors you have or use blends made up of colors you already have, making the projects more cost effective and environmentally friendly. Of course for holiday patterns you’ll want some holiday colors, but there’s wiggle room to use the threads you already own, which is nice.

In addition to the categories I already mentioned, there are many other patterns, including a wide selection of seasonal gnomes, patterns with cats and dogs, food and drink patterns and a nice collection of flowers and plants, just to name a few. There’s probably something for everyone in this store, so go check it out at Cross Stitch Foxy on Etsy.

[Photo: Cross Stitch Foxy]

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